The BBC is running pieces about £10 tricks to make rented rooms feel like home, and there's something deeply depressing about that timing. Because while renters are spending their own money to improve someone else's property, house prices have just posted their biggest annual drop since 2009.

The average house price fell from £1.45 million to £1.40 million between 2021 and 2022 — a drop of £49,000 that nobody seems to be talking about (Source: Office for National Statistics, House prices by local authority). That's not a minor correction. That's the market hitting the brakes after a decade-long sprint.

But here's the cruel irony: even with prices falling, renters are still locked out. They're the ones buying fairy lights and removable wallpaper because they can't afford to buy anything permanent. Meanwhile, existing homeowners are watching their paper wealth evaporate, but they're not exactly sympathy cases — most still sit on massive gains from the post-2010 boom.

The numbers tell the story of a market that's been living on borrowed time. House prices rose steadily from 2018 to 2021, climbing from £1.34 million to £1.45 million in just three years. That's an 8% jump that priced out an entire generation. Then interest rates finally started biting, mortgage approvals dried up, and reality caught up.

What's maddening is that a £49,000 price drop sounds significant until you realise it's still £57,000 higher than 2018 levels. We've essentially given back one year of gains while keeping three years of pandemic-era madness. The people who bought at the peak are underwater. The people who couldn't afford to buy then still can't afford to buy now.

This is why renters are decorating with Command strips and tension rods instead of building equity. The market promised them that patience would pay off, that prices would eventually become reasonable. Instead, even a historic correction leaves homeownership as distant as ever.

The real winners? Landlords collecting rent from tenants who are literally improving their properties for free. Every £10 trick that makes a rental more liveable is £10 that could have gone towards a deposit — if deposits weren't still impossibly large thanks to house prices that remain stratospheric by historical standards.

Britain's housing market hasn't crashed. It's just paused for breath before the next sprint upward. And renters are still the ones paying for the privilege of making someone else's investment feel like home.